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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27693716">Left and Leaving</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sqvalors/pseuds/sqvalors'>sqvalors</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>i'm bleeding i'm not just making conversation [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, First War with Voldemort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Violence, Miscommunication, Original Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:53:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,011</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27693716</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sqvalors/pseuds/sqvalors</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>January, 1981: Remus Lupin's dreams are full of claws.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Background Marlene McKinnon/Dorcas Meadowes, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>i'm bleeding i'm not just making conversation [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2090451</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>109</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Wolfstar Games 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Left and Leaving</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>initially written for the 2020 wolfstar games (team sound), tweaked a lil since then! </p><p>text prompt #1: The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place - George Bernard Shaw.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Remus dreams of a dog.</p><p>He never sees it: it’s always out of sight, pacing the edges of his periphery, breathing on the other side of the door. He knows deep in the well of himself that somewhere a clock is ticking down the seconds until he turns the handle, until the dog gets its teeth into the pale of his throat. It’s not fear that freezes his hand on the doorknob but rather acceptance, a sinking resignation - the feeling that this was always going to be how it ends. The dog has always been there. Remus has always had his hand curled around the handle.</p><p>He always opens the door.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>January of 1981 is cold and brittle-boned. He’s spent most of it and a slice of December staying in an old farm cottage in Northumberland the Order commandeered as a safe house, trying to get a werewolf pack to cooperate. Once a week he makes the trip into Bamburgh to use the floo network in the village’s only wizarding pub, owned by a woman who had taken an instant dislike to him and who he’s reasonably sure is charging him twice the usual amount. Remus can’t really blame her, considering the first time he’d limped over the threshold had been two days post transformation and he’d looked suitably wrecked. She’d taken one look at him, bruises under his eyes and blood under his nails, and pointed him to the backroom without a word.</p><p>The pack he’s trailing is hardly anything to shout about – it’s eight wolves stuck with each other through circumstance and old ties, the sort of thing that happens when normal society pulls the shutter down. He doesn’t think many of them are registered. Their leader is a weathered man named Lockwood who had barely trusted him enough to allow him into the village after he’d caught his scent and still looks at him with his one good eye like he might be about to explode. It had taken several tense meetings in corners of the pub and three letters from Dumbledore before Lockwood had agreed to let Remus run with them on the Full, and he still isn’t entirely sure he won’t wake up dead.</p><p>When he comes to with blood in his mouth and Lockwood standing over him, Remus tries to ignore the ache seeping into his spine long enough to be grateful. He pushes up onto his elbows.</p><p>“We won’t answer to the ministry,” Lockwood says, before dropping a bunched-up coat on Remus’ chest.</p><p>“We aren’t the ministry.”</p><p>“Good.” He stands there for a moment, weighing him up. Remus doesn’t have space in his head for further clarification so he’s quietly relieved when Lockwood deems this enough and heads away through the trees.</p><p>Remus lies there until his ribs no longer feel quite so displaced and then he forces himself to his feet, dragging the coat on over muddy shoulders. It’s his own, he realises, the one he’d left at the treeline. He manages to stagger a few yards before he has to brace himself against a tree trunk and throw up; over a decade of his body turning itself inside out on a monthly basis and the grey of dawn still has his nerves are running so close to the surface he may as well be flayed. He wipes his mouth and tilts his face to the sky. It’s going to rain later.</p><p>The plastic bag of clothes he’d buried at the edge of the woods is where he left it, though it takes scuffing his feet around the roots of a few trees before his moon-addled brain remembers exactly. He tears the bag open, his fingers too shaky to attempt the knot. Inside is a pair of jeans, a motheaten Ramones t-shirt he borrowed from Sirius’ trunk in sixth year, a mossy jumper with cuffs worried into threads. He shakes the dirt from the jeans and pulls them on even though they’re dew damp and he knows when his knees creak later he’ll regret it.  </p><p>The walk back to the house is about a mile and a half if he cuts across a neighbouring field and then he can sleep until noon, when he’ll have to floo Dumbledore and tell him Lockwood is onboard, in whatever capacity that proves to be. Maybe he’ll be home by next week, except even through the brain fog he has the wherewithal to think that doubtful – home is the flat he’s been sharing with Sirius but has spent only a handful of nights in over the last six months, and he doesn’t even know if the rent is being kept up with. Home might be a box of his books and his two tin mugs by now, dumped on the pavement.</p><p>The problem is that he grew up a closed book and found it all too easy to slam shut when Dumbledore told him to. Remus has been lying for so long he may as well have been doing it from birth, an ugly second nature to be exploited, whereas Sirius is a good liar only when it comes to protecting his own. He could never keep things from James even when he tried. There’s a symbiosis to the way they work, always has been – it’s something Remus once found endearing but lately it sets his teeth on edge. </p><p>By the time he gets back to the farmhouse it’s started to drizzle. He leaves the coat on, probably will until his hands are steady enough to cast a warming charm of any substance, and heads through to the tiny kitchen. A cold mug of tea is on the table and he swigs it down in one mouthful, fast enough that the taste hardly registers.</p><p>He should fetch his journal, note down the progress. He should have headed straight to the village to floo the old man and update him directly, regardless of the cold and exhaustion seeping into his marrow from the ground up. What he does instead is sink into a rickety kitchen chair and close his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Back at the end of November, the last time he sees Sirius.</p><p>Crammed into the backroom at the Hog’s Head for a hastily organised Order meeting Remus catches Sirius watching him with a look so abnormally cold he finds himself questioning whether it’s really him. He looks like he’s spent the last forty-eight hours wired, which Remus can’t really hold against him given the dire state of everything: it’s two weeks since the fifth consecutive safe house was exposed and a week after the botched infiltration of a pureblood cell in Westminster that landed McKinnon in St. Mungo’s critical ward. Sirius had been with her that night, both of them Polyjuiced, and the state of him when he’d come home is something Remus can’t get out of his head.</p><p>“The Bristol safe house was a new set up, not many of us knew it was there,” Dearborn is saying, eyes lingering a little too long on Sirius. “They’re one beat ahead of us all the fucking time.”</p><p>Sirius leans back in his chair, the erratic bounce of his foot drumming a tattoo against the floorboards. “Someone’s feeding them information. We’ve all thought it.”</p><p>“Don’t be stupid,” Frank says, but not with much conviction.</p><p>“It’s bloody obvious, Frank,” Dorcas says, thin fingers wrapped around her pint like an anchor. Her eyes flick to Sirius almost imperceptibly. “There’s no other way Marlene would’ve been made, how else do you explain it? She didn’t even have her own face on for fuck’s sake.”</p><p>When Sirius stares at him Remus holds his gaze across the table, jaw set. Cold static creeps around the back of his head. He stops listening after that. They don’t speak for the remainder of the meeting, and Remus doesn’t mention his suspicion to anyone because verbalising it would be too much, and he already feels fractured down the middle. Instead he lets it settle in the pit of his stomach, weighty and festering.</p><p>Frank leaves the meeting first, then Sirius. As per Dumbledore’s suggestion they stagger their arrivals and departures, some leaving the muggle way and some apparating between three safe points to avoid any unwanted stragglers. Remus is in no hurry to leave the warmth of the pub.</p><p>Dorcas checks her watch after Dearborn heads out, and then sparks a cigarette. She offers the silver case across the table.</p><p>“Got another fifteen minutes to kill, beats freezing my arse off out there,” she says. Remus takes one and lets her light it with a finger snap.</p><p>“Supposed to snow at the weekend.”</p><p>“Fuck that.” She leans her elbows on the table and sighs. Her hair is tucked up under a woollen hat, stray corkscrew curls peeking out around her ears. She looks too gaunt and world weary to be someone barely out of school, Remus thinks, but then that can be said of any one of them. She’d been off duty the night Marlene was attacked; no doubt woken by an insistent owl in the early hours with a note that would’ve sent her stomach plummeting through the floor.</p><p>“Have you been able to see her?” He asks quietly once he’s taken a drag. Dorcas doesn’t look up.</p><p>“Dropped off some books yesterday. She looks like shit.” She taps her cigarette off in the ashtray and pulls a face. “Not surprising, really. They’re trying to lessen the scarring. She asked me to smuggle her in some fags though, so I reckon she’s on the mend.”</p><p>“I’m sure she’s a model patient.” Remus says, and Dorcas smiles. “You looking after yourself?”</p><p> “Not got scurvy yet, if that’s what you mean.”</p><p>“Are you sleeping?”</p><p>“Are you?” Dorcas raises an eyebrow at him.</p><p>“Point taken.” Remus hasn’t slept through the night for weeks now. His dreams are full of claws. “I might see if I can get in to see Marlene this weekend if Dumbledore clears it. I owe her a pack of Newports anyway.”</p><p>“She’ll bite your hand off.” Dorcas says, and then checks her watch again. “Right. Do you want to head out first or should I?”</p><p>“Go ahead. The longer I can avoid the washing up the better.”</p><p>“Fair enough.” She stubs out her cigarette and then stands, shrugging her coat on. She pauses adjusting her scarf, a hesitance about her that Remus knows all too well. “Do you think we’re right? About the leak.”</p><p>Remus stares at the tabletop, the beer glass rings and well-worn coasters. The uncertainty in his gut writhes.</p><p>“Yes,” he says, looking up. “I think so.”</p><p>Dorcas nods grimly, lost in her own head. She shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and sighs. </p><p>“It’s a bloody mess,” she says.</p><p>“Don’t let Dumbledore hear you say that.”</p><p>“As if he doesn’t know.” She gets to the doorway that leads out to the main pub and hesitates. “Sirius looked off today.”</p><p>Remus doesn’t know how to say that Sirius has looked off for months now, a composition of nervous energy and paranoia. More often than not he’s out when Remus gets home, or if he’s there he’s pretending to sleep to avoid a conversation. Things have been off kilter since James and Lily went into hiding and Remus hates the way his skin itches when Sirius looks at him.</p><p>“Last week hit him hard.”</p><p>“It hit Marlene harder,” Dorcas says sharply.</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“Do you trust him?”</p><p>And that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it. Remus has sat with it since fifth year, the curdled feeling in his gut that never fully goes away. Sirius has always had a quiet capacity for cruelty that had shocked him at first, the ground falling away beneath him in the wake of the incident, but it’s since become such an obvious thing that it’s hard to see how he ever missed it. He wants to trust Sirius but wanting is not the same as doing and he’s never been more keenly aware of the distinction.</p><p>For a moment Dorcas looks like she has something else to say, maybe something damning and accusatory, and Remus almost wants her to. He knows on the face of it he’s an obvious choice: secretive, serial liar, already socially fucked. Dumbledore has sent him on so many off the map and off the books errands lately he knows his disappearances look like admissions of guilt on their own. To think that maybe Dorcas doesn’t find him the most likely candidate feels sacred.</p><p>Instead of whatever she was going to say she looks at him and softens. “Look after yourself, Lupin.”</p><p>“Of course,” he says, and then she’s gone.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Predictably it’s raining when he heads down into the village. He’s never been particularly susceptible to cold, one of the few perks of the condition, but even through three layers and a half-arsed warming charm the chill gets in. He makes a mental note to pick up some new socks.</p><p>The Laily Worm is a stout building of old stone and warped windows and if it weren’t for the landlady Remus would find it quite charming. It feels like walking into a pub from his childhood, a firelit snapshot of the sixties, complete with horrific carpet and red velvet barstools worn at the edges.</p><p>“It’ll be the usual rate,” says the landlady, frowning at him from across the bar. She looks at the hastily mended cut across his temple and raises an eyebrow.</p><p>“Good afternoon to you too, Mrs Holloway.”</p><p>“Half an hour, remember.”</p><p>“As always.” Remus gives her his best smile and slides across the stack of coins they both know is above and beyond, and then heads for the back room where the floo connection is, locking the door behind him with a quick jab of his wand.</p><p>He casts a silencing charm and watches the shimmer of it rippling out across the wood panelling. The hum of the pub vanishes, and Remus stands in the middle of the room with his eyes closed, trying to muster even a little enthusiasm. The fireplace is broad and sturdy, the stone run through with old magic of its own. Remus has always preferred the utilitarianism of rural architecture over the grandiose, the closeness it still has to its origin; he places his palm on the mantle and feels it almost like static.</p><p>When he puts his head into the flames and Dumbledore swims into view Remus tries to look pleased to see him.</p><p>“Remus! You’re looking well my boy,” Dumbledore says, the smile not quite reaching his eyes. Remus wonders when that happened. “All is quiet down at the border, I presume?”</p><p>“For the most part.” Remus pushes his hair out of his eyes, entirely too aware that he looks anything other than well. “Lockwood is willing to work with us, providing the ministry is kept away.”</p><p>“Not a champion of bureaucracy, is he? No matter. His cooperation is valuable, regardless. The others in his company are likely to fall into step with his decisions?”</p><p>Remus tries to imagine a world in which anyone dealt the hand Lockwood and his boys have been given would champion bureaucracy and almost scoffs aloud. For all his apparent goodwill Dumbledore has never quite understood. Once Remus had believed the headmaster selfless.</p><p>“I think so, yes,” he says. “They’ve no reason not to.”</p><p>“Very good. I hope the locals are welcoming? Belinda Holloway is a most trusted ally, despite her somewhat brusque manner.” Dumbledore adjusts his spectacles and then folds his hands in his lap. “She does not know the details of your position, of course, but she is aware of my involvement. Delightful woman. Makes an excellent bread pudding.”</p><p>“She’s very accommodating.” Remus ignores the urge to check his watch. “I was wondering when it would be acceptable to head back to London, with the pack willing to swear allegiance.”</p><p>“All in time, all in time. I should think it best to ensure full cooperation before abandoning the post, don’t you? We can’t leave these things half finished in times like these. Another moon cycle, perhaps?”</p><p>Another none-answer to add to the mounting pile. Remus wants to ask why he’s being kept at arms-length, made to chase a handful of werewolves he doubts will make a difference to either side, even if Greyback were to clock them.    It feels pointless, a stupid bit of sleight of hand on the old man’s part designed to keep him busy but for what purpose he can’t fathom.</p><p>“Fine.” There’s a headache brewing at his temples. “Of course.”</p><p>The rest of the conversation is mundane; Remus asks about James and Lily, and Marlene’s recovery, and Dumbledore fills the gaps with things that sound profound but aren’t. By the time the connection closes Remus wants to break something. The thought of spending another month holed up by himself with limited to no contact with his friends takes hold of something in his chest and squeezes.</p><p>Though it isn’t late when he leaves the pub it’s already getting dark, the sky purpling like a bruise behind the rooftops. The rain had stopped some time ago but the pavement is still black with it in patches and Remus has to pick his way around the puddles. He stops by the grocers on his way back to the farmhouse and picks up a loaf of bread and some tinned soup, and though he considers apparating back to the farmhouse he knows the walk will at least give him time to think, maybe work out the nervous energy he can feel beneath his skin.</p><p>He gets about halfway home before he feels uneasy. The road is flanked on both sides by fields laid bare by winter, the hedgerows the only disruption to the eyeline – there’s nothing out there, and yet Remus feels like suddenly he’s under a microscope. If he’d been paying attention he might’ve clocked it earlier, but his headache is back and the day after the transformation always has his brain feeling a little like it’s been shaken around, which he supposes in a way it has been. He stops walking and tries to focus. There’s something like a blip on a radar, a spark of magic where there shouldn’t be. He considers his options: turn back to the village or continue to the safe house and lead whatever it is back with him. Neither one is particularly appealing. The thought that he might be moments away from an Unforgiveable when he’s standing in the middle of a country lane, shopping bag in one hand and half-finished cigarette in the other, somehow feels more humiliating than anything else he could imagine. He does a 360 turn on the spot, squinting into the mist.</p><p>“Go on then,” he says under his breath. He drops the cigarette butt and lets it smoulder in the weeds. There’s nothing to suggest danger, not even the telltale shimmer of a glamour, and yet he feels the back of his neck prickle. He wonders briefly if it could be one of Lockwood’s wolves, keeping an eye on him like they had at the beginning, but he can’t imagine why they’d need the secrecy. The idea that the Death Eaters would see him as enough of a threat to bother staking out rather than simply blowing him to bits on sight also feels unlikely, but given the way of things lately he supposes anything is possible.  </p><p>Remus doesn’t know how long he stands there, wand drawn; by the time the sensation of being watched leaves him his fingers are numb with cold and the last of the sunlight has dwindled to nothing. He scans the fields one last time, hardly worth it in the dark, and then takes his time lighting another cigarette for the rest of the walk.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>The last fortnight of January passes by with hardly anything to show for itself. Remus spends most of it with the wolves or in front of the fire in the farmhouse, writing reports he doesn’t think anyone will even read. He sleeps fitfully, his dreams cut through with bloody teeth and the hanging threat of something he can’t put his finger on. He owls James and Lily and gets a thrice bounced letter in return that includes a photograph of Harry grinning up at him again and again from a patchwork quilt, new teeth proudly displayed, which Remus slides into his wallet in front of the muggle photograph of Sirius he took two Christmases ago and tries not to think about anymore.</p><p>The morning preceding the February full moon he’s walking the perimeter of the woods with one of Lockwood’s boys, the winter sun stark behind the trees, when he senses something watching them. He stops mid-step and scans the undergrowth.</p><p>“Thomas,” Remus says it quietly, just loud enough for the other boy to hear him. He’s stopped a few steps ahead, head cocked.</p><p>“I know. Somewhere to the left.”</p><p>Though his hand had gone to his wand the moment he felt the presence of something else Remus doesn’t feel the fear he knows should be there. He waits for it, expects the rush of adrenaline or a curse fired from the trees, and neither comes.</p><p>“Do you think it’s Lockwood? Sometimes he likes to test our instincts.” Thomas sniffs, frowning.</p><p>“I don’t think whatever it’s a threat,” Remus says, unsure even as he says it. He takes his hand from his wand.</p><p>“How do you know?” Thomas says. His gaze is still fixed on a point deep into the woods. He’s young, only just scraping seventeen, and he suddenly looks it. He jerks his head to get his hair out of his eyes and only partially succeeds.</p><p>The first thing Remus had realised since trying to integrate himself with Lockwood’s pack was that mainstream school and a childhood of repression had made him more adept at tuning out his instincts – he only has to watch the way the wolves here move through the world, even when human, to know that much. Two months is hardly enough time to unpick the stitches on that particular flaw, but it comes easier now. It doesn’t seem like such a betrayal of himself to rely on what the wolf lends him.</p><p>“It doesn’t feel like one,” he says. He can still feel eyes on him. “I can’t explain it properly.”</p><p>Thomas doesn’t seem convinced, but his shoulders drop. “Should we carry on?”</p><p>Remus nods, and pulls his attention back to the path. He can’t pinpoint a scent he doesn’t recognise even when he tries, and though that should be a comfort given the circumstances it makes him uneasy. He makes a note to mention it to Dumbledore in his next check-in, perhaps, or at least pull Lockwood to one side later. The whole point of the perimeter walks this close to the Full is to ensure their safety, after all, and Remus can’t shake the feeling of being watched. Not being hexed to hell and back immediately means nothing.</p><p>“If there’s someone staking us out Lockwood’s going to go mad.” Thomas squints into the sunlight as he looks over his shoulder at Remus. “He’s been on edge ever since that thing down south.”</p><p>“You can’t blame him.” Remus remembers the story in the <em>Prophet, </em>tucked into the centre pages: twelve wolves massacred in the New Forest during the December Full, all from the same halfway house meant to keep them safe. The paper had run the story as unsolved, a terrible but ignorable burst of violence amongst the rest, but Greyback may has well have left his signature at the scene. Lockwood had made it very clear from the moment he set foot in Bamburgh that if Remus brought danger to the pack he’d be dealt with swiftly.</p><p>“He’s a paranoid old man,” Thomas says, and Remus can’t help but laugh.</p><p>“He’s barely fifty.”</p><p>“Yeah, and how many fifty-year-old werewolves do you know? Something always gets us first. He may as well be ancient.”</p><p>“Point taken.” Remus doesn’t say that he can count the number of werewolves he’s met over thirty on one hand, let alone any over fifty. It’s a fact he tries not to think about either. “He’ll want to know if there’s something in the woods other than us.”</p><p>Thomas makes a noncommittal noise at that but doesn’t argue.</p><p>Later, over a pint in a corner booth of the pub, Remus raises the incident with Lockwood in hushed tones and waits for him to offer something useful to the situation.</p><p>“You both felt it?” Lockwood asks, the frown etched deep into his forehead. Remus nods, glancing off to the bar; the landlady snaps around as if she hadn’t been staring at them.</p><p>“I thought it was just me, it’s happened before, but Thomas caught it as well.”</p><p>“It’s happened before?”</p><p>“Once.” Remus shrugs, fingers drumming against his glass. “Last month. I put it down to post-transformation paranoia mostly.”</p><p>Lockwood grunts. He looks at Remus like he doesn’t quite believe it, and Remus can’t even blame him. “I think this should be the last full moon you spend with us.”</p><p>“I don’t think it’s Death Eaters.”</p><p>“Whatever it is, it’s not welcome here.” Lockwood says, a finality to his words that Remus doesn’t have it in himself to argue with. “You can run with us tomorrow night and our previous agreement still stands, but I don’t want trouble.”</p><p>“No, of course not.” Remus leans back in his seat, putting some distance between them. He feels pulled taut at the joints, though whether that’s from the moon or the low-level stress he seems to carry with him every day he can’t tell, and the fact that Lockwood has more or less told him to fuck off doesn’t actually feel so terrible. If anything it brings a dull sense of relief.</p><p>“I’ll do my own walk of the forest tonight,” Lockwood is saying, as he finishes his pint. “I’ll take Thomas in case he recognises anything.” He pushes his chair back, the legs scraping unpleasantly against the floor, and then shrugs his jacket on.</p><p>Remus watches him go. He wonders if he should floo Dumbledore off schedule, tell him he’s been dismissed, but decides he’d rather eat glass than face that conversation when he already feels about ready to unzip his own skin. Instead he finishes his pint, orders a second, and tries to ignore the accusing glare of Mrs Holloway.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>“Want a drag?”</p><p>Remus looks up from undoing his boots and sees Thomas and another of the group, Eli, ambling down towards the treeline, a spliff dangling lazily from one hand. He exhales a thin stream of white into the evening air and offers it across as he gets closer.</p><p>“I’m good.” Remus shoves his socks down into one boot and lets his feet acclimatise to the damp ground.</p><p>“Suit yourself. Find it helps with the joints. A joint for the joints.” Thomas huffs at his own joke and passes the rollup to Eli as he starts to strip out of his clothes. “Lockwood says it makes the wolf too unpredictable, but.”</p><p>“Not had any problems yet,” Eli says, shrugging. He’s a little older than Remus but difficult to properly place, and Remus hasn’t thought to pry. “Sure you don’t want some?”</p><p>Remus shakes his head, rolling the knots out of his neck as he does. Usually he’d say yes, Lockwood’s opinions aside, but the uncertainty hanging in the air makes him wary. The familiar ache in his spine as the sun starts to dip below the trees gets harder to ignore and he pulls his jumper and T-shirt over his head in one motion, dropping them on top of his coat.</p><p>“Lockwood made us do another circle of the woods,” Thomas is saying, kicking his jeans into a heap. “Didn’t see anything though. Didn’t feel like we were being watched, neither.”</p><p>“Maybe whatever it was has moved on.” Remus isn’t yet used to having serious conversations while stripping down with near strangers, but he tries not to let it show. He busies himself with shoving his clothes into a plastic bag and spelling it sealed, his wand the last thing to be stowed.</p><p>“Or maybe it’s waiting in the undergrowth,” Eli says, his smile glinting in the dark. Thomas snorts and shoves him, and Remus tries not to think to much about the possibility that Eli might be right.</p><p>Predictably the pull in his joints gets worse and no amount of freedom to run with other wolves eases the gut-wrench of one’s body breaking to accommodate itself. By the time Remus makes it to the clearing where Lockwood is waiting for them with the others his jaw is clenched so tight he can only manage a brief nod before something in his ribcage cracks and the world turns.</p><p>Time moves differently during the Full, so it could have been an hour or four when Remus catches the scent of something that wasn’t there before and turns his attention to it. He’s across the woods, one of the others somewhere off to his right just out of his periphery, when he finds the trail. He recognises it faintly, and the wolf fastens onto it and chases – it blurs in his vision, zig-zagging just out of reach. It’s not the thrill of the hunt so much as it is a canine curiosity Remus hasn’t felt since school, an exciting distraction for the wolf to burn off some energy.</p><p>There’s a growl as one of the others – Lockwood – barrels into him from the side and knocks the wind out of him. Remus rounds on him, suddenly defensive of something he can’t place. He hadn’t been the only one to give chase, and there’s an edge of something savage to the way Lockwood has been following the scent that even as the wolf Remus hates. A singular goal makes itself known to him then, hackles raised in the clearing they find themselves in, the same thought flashing red and possessive in his mind. Lockwood stands between him and whatever they’d been following, the sight of it obscured. There are others just out of the clearing, dropping back as Lockwood stakes his claim. Remus paces, teeth bared. There’s a hierarchy here, an order Remus knows he’s about to disrupt in a way that could get him killed – he surges forward and closes his jaw around flesh. Lockwood snarls and rolls them over, and Remus kicks out.</p><p>A flash of black bursts from the brush, teeth flashing white and then a shock of red as it catches Lockwood’s hind leg; it’s not enough to do serious damage, but it distracts him enough that Remus is able to scramble out from under him and retreat a little. A spark of recognition lights up in his brain when he sees the dog, bright and childlike, and then the wolf sees Lockwood advancing on his prey and lunges without thought.</p><p>Remus doesn’t know, cannot know, how things happen: the wolf never completely passes on the memories of the night before, though it bleeds through in fragments if he lets it. He knows another wolf appears on the edge of the clearing, one of the boys who tries to get involved in something clearly beyond him, and he knows the stench of blood and dirt fills his head. He knows there’s a whimper from the dog as Lockwood slams into it from the side, claws catching its ribcage, and then Remus is on him again. He knows the wolf doesn’t stop howling.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Sparse daylight wakes him. Remus opens his eyes slowly, the taste in his mouth thick and metallic, and he rolls onto his side to throw up before he’s even fully awake. The stench of everything is amplified to such a level it makes him wince. Every bone in his body hurts, a dull pain that reverberates as he moves to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. It comes away bloody.</p><p>Dread and panic fight for purchase in his chest – he scans the ground around him, and when he sees Sirius lying awkwardly in the undergrowth he vomits again.</p><p>Standing is out of the question so he crawls, torn palms forgotten, until he’s leaning over him. Sirius’ chest gapes, four angry claw marks carved almost to the bone in parts, and Remus chokes down a hoarse sob as he scrambles to pull him upright. He does a cursory glance of the rest of him, runs shaking hands across his shoulders and into his hair, and though Sirius is covered in blood and dirt the only real damage is to his torso.</p><p>“Fuck, oh god, Sirius.” He can’t think, can’t marshal a complete sentence that isn’t cracked in the middle. Sirius coughs, a bloody spray on his chin, and then gasps when the cough reminds his body of the wreck of his chest. Remus puts a hand to his cheek and tilts his face towards him.</p><p>“Moony,” Sirius says, voice shredded. “You look like shit.”</p><p>“You fuck.” He lets go of Sirius’ shoulders as if burned and withdraws, sitting back on his haunches. Sirius winces, a groan bitten off before it could begin. “You stupid fuck. What are you doing here?”</p><p>Sirius lies there, staring at the sky. His chest heaves but at least he’s breathing, at least he’s conscious, at least he’s mostly intact. Remus’ gut cramps and he retches blood into the dead leaves, hunched over on his knees. His throat burns with it – he knows the wolf has done something awful, but he can’t remember. He closes his eyes tight and tries to steady himself.</p><p>“Remus, I’m. Fuck.” Sirius is struggling to sit up, one hand clutched to his chest. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Don’t.”</p><p>“I didn’t think –“</p><p>“No.” Remus glares at him, cold panic spreading like a curse across his scalp. The white noise in his ears is almost deafening. “You didn’t.”</p><p>“Can you stand?” Sirius asks, after what seems like hours of unbearable silence. He’s still bleeding sluggishly, his face a shocking white against the tangle of his hair save for the chewed-up mess of his mouth. He looks terrible, but he’s upright.</p><p>Remus can’t distinguish the relief from the anger in himself. He nods once, sharp, and then pushes up onto his feet. Sirius grabs him under the elbow and pulls him the rest of the way before Remus shrugs him off and stumbles away. His head spins and he almost throws up again, but he catches himself on a tree and waits it out. With his eyes closed and his chest still heaving he takes stock of his own injuries – a hopefully superficial bite in the curve of his left side, knuckles of both hands bloodied and swollen, claw marks dug deep into his thigh. From the way his face feels he wouldn’t be surprised if his cheekbone were fractured.</p><p>“You’re bleeding,” Sirius is saying, when he tunes back in. “Remus? Will you let me see –“</p><p>“Don’t,” Remus cuts him off. Part of his brain wants to laugh at the absurdity of the situation: both of them naked and bloody in the woods, in the middle of February, and not a wand between them. There’s a joke in that somewhere, probably. James would find a joke in it. Right now all Remus wants is to lie down until his back teeth feel less likely to fall out of his head. “Can you apparate?”</p><p> “I think so.” Sirius nods shakily.</p><p>“Enough for both of us?”</p><p>“I think so.”</p><p>Remus steadies himself, suddenly grateful that the shock of whatever happened last night has numbed him to the cold. From the way his teeth are chattering the same can’t be said for Sirius, which Remus allows himself a sliver of spiteful joy over. He lets Sirius grab him under the arm and prop them both up and then he’s yanked off his feet with a sickening jerk.</p><p>They land hard in the kitchen of the farmhouse and Remus’ legs go from under him. Sirius catches him around the waist but only manages to slow his fall as they both sink to the floor, an inelegant tangle of limbs.</p><p>Lying on his back with the wind knocked out of him Remus waits for the world to stop spinning. If he lets his head fall to the left he knows he’ll see Sirius doing the same, so he stares resolutely at the ceiling. He doesn’t let himself think.</p><p>“How did you know?” He asks.</p><p>“Followed you home, weeks ago.” Sirius’ voice sounds like gravel. “Hoped it’d be enough to land accurately.”</p><p>“It was you,” Remus says, though part of him had known that from the start. Something tucked neatly inside his ribcage had known all along, and the wolf had held that knowledge safe in its teeth. “It was you. You stupid fucking idiot, Sirius.”</p><p>Sirius laughs at that, a harsh sound that hurts to hear. “Do you have any dittany?”</p><p>“Some.” Remus screws his eyes closed. “You weren’t bitten were you?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“I’d kill you if you were.”</p><p>“You didn’t hurt me,” Sirius says, as if that’s the only unasked question holding space between them. Remus almost laughs. “This wasn’t you.”</p><p>“I know,” Remus says. “It’s not your blood I’ve been vomiting up all morning.”</p><p>“He’s alive, y’know.” Sirius has edged closer to him, and when Remus opens his eyes he swims into view. “The other werewolf.”</p><p>“His name’s Lockwood.”</p><p>“Okay. Lockwood’s alive.” Sirius sounds almost petulant, which Remus finds particularly grating. “He went for Padfoot and you went for him, but you didn’t kill him if that’s what you were worried about.”</p><p>“Can you just,” Remus pushes himself into a sitting position and props his elbows on his knees, his head heavy against his forearms. “Can you just shut up, for a minute. Please.”</p><p>To his credit Sirius does, though Remus suspects this is more to do with the fact that it hurts to breathe than anything else. In the quiet of his own head he tries to sort things into an acceptable order, a shape that makes sense. It figures that the feeling of being followed didn’t trigger any suspicion if it were only Sirius; the wolf knows him, after all, could recognise Padfoot in the pitch dark, even after everything. Even after everything.</p><p>“It’s in the bathroom,” Remus says, muffled by his knees. “The dittany.”</p><p>Sirius goes. When he comes back, jar of dittany in hand, Remus is working on Summoning his wand and clothes from the woods. He manages it on the third attempt, though the strain of it makes his skin buzz. Sirius passes him a dressing gown and a pair of pyjama bottoms he seems to have dredged up from Remus’ bedroom.</p><p>“I left my things in the field behind the house,” Sirius says. He’s pulled his jeans on, his wand tucked into the back pocket already. He drops his backpack on the floor by the breakfast table. “Figured I’d be back this way eventually.”</p><p>“Presumptuous of you.” Remus doesn’t look at him as he dresses, careful to avoid dragging the dressing gown across the bite in his side. The inside of his head feels full of static.</p><p>“Will you let me fix that?” Sirius asks, ignoring him. His own wound looks like he’s made a go of cleaning it already, the dittany closing the outer edges of the gashes. He’s been sparing with it.</p><p>Remus wants to say no. He wants to sleep for forty-eight hours straight, alone, dreamless and dulled to the ache in his bones. He wants Sirius to leave or explain himself, or maybe he wants both of those things at once – the Sirius he left in London seems an entirely different beast compared to the washed out vision standing in the farmhouse kitchen, dark with bruises and dried blood.</p><p>Instead, he grits his teeth and sits at the small kitchen table and lets Sirius crouch in front of him, near reverent; he touches the angry skin around the bite mark in Remus’ side, muttering a numbing spell as he goes. He clots the blood with something silent, the spell so easily dredged up by now that he doesn’t have to speak it into existence at all, and then smooths a generous layer of dittany across the worst of the wound. Remus draws in a sharp breath when he presses too hard to assess the damage and feels him look up in apology. From out of his bag Sirius digs up an Order issue first-aid kit and Remus watches him pull out a roll of bandages.</p><p>“Arms up.”</p><p>“I’m not a child,” Remus says, but he raises his arms, holding the dressing gown out of the way, and Sirius winds the strip tight around his torso, holding it firm until he can spell it into place. Sirius’ hands are warm and steady, and they don’t falter once. Sirius has always been remarkably business-like about fixing him up – he supposes it comes from smaller moments over the years, the nights in the school holidays when they didn’t have Madam Pomfrey on hand or the times he left the hospital wing earlier than he should’ve and would wake in the small hours, bleeding through his sheets. All of them seemed to become adept at the touchstone healing spells, but Sirius was always the one who was able to hold the edges of a wound together without his hands shaking. Even living in the same flat but barely speaking Remus had come home fucked up more than once and Sirius had sat him down under the sterile lighting in the bathroom and pieced him back together again. Methodical and quick, but never anything but careful.</p><p>Remus looks at him, then. There’s a slim cut across his bottom lip that bleeds when he smiles up at him, and he’s dark beneath the eyes in a way he seems to have been for months now. The wounds in his chest are ragged at the edges, the skin pink and raw, and Remus sees in vicious technicolour all the ways in which it could’ve been worse.</p><p>“Does Dumbledore know you’re here?” He asks. Sirius shakes his head. He gets to his feet, wincing a little, and then sits opposite.</p><p>“Not supposed to know you’re here anyway. Figured he’d tell me not to come.”</p><p>“Why did you?”</p><p>Sirius doesn’t say anything at first. Staring at his grazed knuckles knotted in his lap he looks like a child, worn out and lost. If it weren’t for the taste of blood rusting between his teeth to remind him of what got them here in the first place Remus would feel sorry for him.</p><p>“I didn’t know where you kept going,” Sirius says, quietly. “You never told me.”</p><p>“You almost got yourself ripped apart by werewolves because I didn’t tell you where I was?”</p><p>“Don’t say it like that, like I’m being stupid.” Sirius looks at him like he’s a puzzle he can’t crack. “I followed you because you keep disappearing and our friends keep dying or nearly dying and I needed to know it wasn’t because of you.”</p><p>“Right.”</p><p>“Don’t act like you haven’t assumed I’ve been off fucking my own insane cousins for the good of the cause.”</p><p>“Christ, Sirius.” Remus scrapes his fingers through his hair and tries to ignore the mess of dirt that falls out. He doesn’t have the energy to argue with that. “After the thing with Marlene-“</p><p>“You thought I’d almost got my own arm blasted off just to stick it to the old man?”</p><p>“It seemed awfully convenient that Marlene ended up hospitalised and you didn’t, that’s all.”</p><p>“Fucking hell.” Sirius looks at him with an expression that seems to be caught somewhere between incredulous and furious, his pale eyes sharp despite everything. “I thought you knew me better than that.”</p><p>“Yeah, well.” Remus touches the quick-blooming bruise on his cheekbone and grimaces. “You followed me here expecting I was about to sell everyone out to the Dark Lord, so I think this makes us even.”</p><p>Sirius looks like he might be about to say something cutting about that, but he swallows whatever it is and digs out the rest of his clothes from his rucksack instead. Once he’s tugged an old sweatshirt over his head, careful to avoid the worst of the damage, he drops a box of muggle ibuprofen on the table and stands.</p><p>“I’m going to floo Dumbledore and see if he can fix whatever happened with your man Lockwood with a good word, or something.” He ignores the face Remus pulls. “Take a couple of those and go to bed, will you?”</p><p>“I think it might take more than a few platitudes to fix relations with someone I’m pretty sure I maimed last night.”</p><p>“Don’t be dramatic. You did no worse to him than he did to you,” Sirius says. He lingers as if he’s about to reach out but changes his mind, his hands sinking into his pockets instead. That pulls at something in Remus’ chest. “I’ll be back later.”</p><p>Remus stays at the table for what feels like hours before he manages to muster up enough willpower to get himself up from the chair and down the hallway to the tiny bathroom, his knuckles white on the porcelain of the washbasin as he tries hard not to look himself in the eye. He fills a glass with water and swills down the painkillers, and then he brushes his teeth until the only blood in his mouth his own.</p><p>-</p><p>It’s dark by the time the bed dips under Sirius’ weight and wakes him. Remus blinks in the dim light of Sirius’ <em>lumos </em>and goes instinctively for his own wand on the nightstand before he remembers.</p><p>“Hey,” says Sirius, his hand warm on Remus’ shoulder. He’s pulled his hair back from his face and cleaned himself up a little, the bruise across his brow settling into a dark blue. “Dumbledore is going to talk to Lockwood in person tomorrow. He’s owled him already.”</p><p>“Saying what?” Remus tries to imagine what story the headmaster has spun to attempt to smooth this over.</p><p>“He didn’t say.”</p><p>“What did you tell him? About why you’re here?”</p><p>“Personal reasons.” Sirius kicks his boots off and lets each one thump down to the floorboards. He lies down on his side on top of the covers, facing Remus in a perfect parenthesis. “He gave me a right bollocking.”</p><p>“Good,” Remus murmurs. He studies the blue-lit lines of Sirius’ face across from him and wonders how exactly they got here. “I could’ve killed you last night.”</p><p>“No.” Sirius says it with such simple confidence that Remus almost believes him. “I don’t think so.”</p><p>“I mean it, you could’ve died.”</p><p>“But not because of you.”</p><p>Remus stares at him. He suddenly feels a hundred years old, the moon waning in his blood. Sirius reaches across and touches his bruised cheekbone, the line of his jaw, his fingers coming to rest at the curve of his neck where his pulse jumps. Remus doesn’t know how to tell him that the feeling the wolf had upon thinking Sirius had been killed is still rooted in his gut, cracking him open. If he closes his eyes he can hear the sound he’d made, dragged up from the worst parts of himself.</p><p>“God, I’m so fucking tired,” he says.</p><p>Sirius brushes his hair back from his temple and Remus lets him. Tomorrow is for dealing with the mess he left behind last night, and for the inevitable talking to from Dumbledore, and maybe even for addressing the fact that Sirius is here and alive and not selling them out. For now he settles for reaching out and tugging the front of Sirius’ sweater until he shuffles closer and Remus can slip his hands up underneath it, careful to avoid the healing claw marks. He breathes in the smell of him, heartbreaking in its familiarity, and with his eyes closed against everything else it’s almost enough.  </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>the title of this is stolen from a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrXsz17lFno">song by the weakerthans</a>, which is a huge first-war vibe. the location is a real one but i've taken several liberties, and didn't get to include bamburgh castle though i wanted to, (sorry). the name of the pub is a northumberland-specific mythological dragon sort of thing, which i thought was fitting. </p><p>thanks for reading! xo</p></blockquote></div></div>
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